U.S. HUMAN RIGHTS NETWORK
POLITICAL PRISONERS/STATE REPRESSION WORKING GROUP


The Obama Administration is holding meetings to prepare its list of accepted recommendations from governments at its 11/5/11 Geneva appearance. We must keep Cuba's PP recommendation in the U.S. list of human rights concerns. This group is working towards building a firestorm for US Political Prisoners in preparation of the US's March 18th return to Geneva.

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Monday, March 21, 2011

Oral Statement Regarding the Adoption of the UPR Report on the USA

Oral Statement Regarding the Adoption of the UPR Report on the USA
US Human Rights Network
www.ushrnetwork.org

Oral Statement Regarding the Adoption of the UPR Report on the USA

Submitted by lbaum on Fri, 03/18/2011 - 12:39pm

• Adoption
• Joint Statement
• UPR

On behalf of the US Human Rights Network, a network of civil society organizations and advocates from across the United States committed to the advancement of human rights for all across the United States

Mr President, we acknowledge the US government’s unprecedented level of civil society engagement throughout the UPR. That engagement could and should serve as a model for how civil society and governments can engage effectively in the UPR process. However, it is critical that the UPR be about more than just process – we call on the Administration to take concrete action to implement the recommendations included in the UPR Report, recommendations that reflect long-standing calls for action from civil society within the United States and indeed from the international community.

Mr. President, we are aware of the US administration’s desire to assert its moral and political leadership in the area of human rights enforcement. Human rights leadership on the State level is critically needed as we collectively face the upheavals of the early 21st century. However, State leadership in the area of human rights suggests that a state has acted or continues to act based on a consistent commitment to upholding international norms and standards in its domestic policies and international conduct. Based on that simple supposition, the US cannot can claim for itself exclusive leadership in the area of human rights, nor can any other state.

For the US to assert leadership it must banish to the dustbins of history its claim for US “exceptionalism” that is based on a national narrative that is more myth than reality.

There is nothing exceptional about the fact that the US has not ratified most of the core human rights instruments and continues to embrace reservations, understandings and declarations in the few treaties that it has ratified.

There is nothing exceptional about the fact that in these times of economic crisis, when millions of US citizens and residents are unemployed, lack adequate housing, are hungry, are still without affordable or accessible health care or equally funded education, and when workers are demanding the basic right to organize and collectively bargain; the US administration continues to reject economic, social and cultural rights as human rights, and as such, fails to take responsibility for its affirmative obligations to develop a plan of action aimed at the fulfillment of those rights.

There is nothing exceptional that 60 years after the landmark court decision in 1954 that began the era of dismantling the US Apartheid system - Black unemployment rates among youth are 40, 50, and even 60 precent in some urban areas; that Black, Latino and Native people make up the vast majority of the over two million individuals incarcerated in the world largest penal system. And when they are not being imprisoned, Black and Brown youth are being illegally killed by police across the country.

There is nothing exceptional about the fact that the demands for effective self-determination on the part of indigenous people in the continental US, Hawaii and Alaska are continually ignored by successive administrations, and that Puerto Rico continues to languish in political limbo

There is nothing exceptional about the fact that despite its high-sounding commitment to due process, fair trials and justice, the US administration indefinitely detains, without charge or effective access to justice, dozens of people at its Guantanamo gulag, joining the over 100 Black, Latino, Native and anti-racist White political prisoners still languishing in the inhumane conditions of super-max prisons in the US.

Mr President, while the US government will argue that it has limited ability to address many of the 228 recommendations received from this body, we suggest two concrete things that are within its ability to either implement or advocate for:

• an internal mechanism in the Executive Branch to educate, coordinate and monitor human rights compliance among federal agencies, in the form of an interagency task force;
• the establishment of a national human rights institution, as recommended by many states;
• a permanent mechanism for engaging representatives from US civil society in human rights accountability structures and the development of national plans of action.

Freed from its national self-delusions and committed to objective principles and agreed-on international norms, the US can play a critical role in the ongoing struggle for a new conception and practice of human rights.

Friday, February 18, 2011

ACT NOW! DISTRIBUTE WIDELY! ACT NOW! DISTRIBUTE WIDELY! ACT NOW!

At yesterday's White House meeting on the US's response to the UN UPR Working Group Recommendations, we were told that all comments must be submitted by close of business today. On behalf of all imprisoned COINTELPRO/Civil Rights Era activists, please

TELL White House Rep Scott Busby (ScottW.Busby@nsc.eop.gov ), Legal Adviser Harold Koh (KohHH@state.gov), State Dept Rep David Sullivan (SullivanDB@state.gov),
Asst. Atty General Samuel Bagenstos (samuel.bagenstos@usdoj.gov ),U.S. Atty General Eric Holder (AskDOJ@usdoj.gov)

1. ADOPT UPR Working Group Recommendation Numbers 92-153 and 92-154, and

2. Implement UPR Working Group Recommendation Numbers 92-153 and 92-154 by :
a. President Obama taking concrete steps and using his presidential clemency powers to commute the sentences to time served and release all COINTELRO/Civil Rights Era political activist currently held as prisoners in federal custody;
b. That he direct the Obama-Holder Department of Justice to review the convictions of all COINTELPRO/Civil Rights Era activists in federal or state custody to identify and address civil and human rights violations; and
c. That President Obama use his executive authority to create a National Truth and Reconciliation Commission, for release and compensation of all COINTELPRO/Civil Rights ERA political activists currently held in federal and state facilities.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

CHECK IT: Statement by Cuban Ambassador + More!

PLEASE MAKE CALLS AND SEND IN LETTERS TODAY ON BEHALF OF U.S. POLITICAL PRISONERS!
HONOR BLACK HISTORY, FREE THE ONES THAT HELPED MAKE IT POSSIBLE!

SOME OF THE LETTERS THAT HAVE BEEN SENT IN:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/48487719 - Nkechi Taifa
http://www.scribd.com/doc/48487717 - Bill Fletcher
http://www.scribd.com/doc/48487716 - Bonnie Kerness

PLEASE PARTICIPATE! Contact ushrnpp@gmail.com and ppfirestorm@gmail.com to report the number of e-mails and letters mailed/faxed.
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STATEMENT BY CUBAN AMBASSADOR

Statement by the Permanent Representative of Cuba, Ambassador Rodolfo Reyes Rodriguez, in the Universal Periodic Review of the United States of America, Human Rights Council, Geneva, 5 November 2010

Cuba recommends the United States:

1. To end the Blockade against Cuba, described as crime of genocide and that seriously violates the human rights of the Cuban people, as well as fundamental freedoms of U.S. citizens and third states.

2. To release the five Cuban political prisoners -- arbitrarily detained, as acknowledged by the Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions in its Opinion No. 19/2005 --, serving unjust sentences that resulted from a politically manipulated trial in open disregard for the rules of the due process.

3. To prosecute or extradite for trial Luis Posada Carriles and other dozens of well-known terrorists living with impunity in the United States and responsible for the deaths of more than 3,000 Cubans and for the maiming or other disability caused to over 2,000.

4. To respect the Cuban people's right to self-determination and to cease their interference and hostile actions against Cuba.

5. To put on trial the perpetrators of tortures, extrajudicial executions and other serious violations of human rights committed in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, los Camp NAMA and BALAD, and those carried out by the Joint Special Operations Command and the CIA.

6. To wipe out war crimes from their troops abroad, including the killings of innocent civilians and to prosecute those responsible.

7. To end:

A) the unjust incarceration of political prisoners, including Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal:

B) the violation of the rights of indigenous peoples;

C) the violence and discrimination against migrants;

D) the prosecution and execution of mentally-ill persons and minors.

E) the discrimination against Afro-descendants.

8. To ensure the realization of the rights to food and health of all who live in their territory.

9. To put an end to their actions against the realization of the rights of peoples to a healthy environment, peace, development and self-determination.

Thank you very much

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CHECK IT! SUNDAY ONLINE WORKSHOP AT http://www.abibitumikasa.com/forums/afrikan-events-happenings/43282-free-online-talk-u-s-political-prisoners-state-repression.html?referrerid=1
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IMMEDIATE RELEASE - PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY
February 3, 2011

CALL TO ACTION:
Demand Obama Administration Respect UPR Process,
Adopt UN UPR Recommendation to Release U.S. Political Prisoners

Atlanta, GA, - The U.S. Human Rights Network Political Prisoner/State Repression Working Group (USHRN PP/SR Wkg Grp) today demands the Obama Administration adopt the UN Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) recommendations to release COINTELPRO/Civil Rights Era political activists held in U.S. prisons, some more than 40 years.

"The UPR shed global light on the United States' dirty little open secret and propelled to the forefront the unfinished business of the modern U.S. Civil/Human Rights movement. “We are working with activists across the country to put America’s political prisoners on the global human rights priority list alongside other atrocities like the death penalty, racial discrimination, the absence of treaty ratification and the lack of a national institution monitoring domestic human rights practices” Efia Nwangaza said.

Harold Hongju Koh, Legal Adviser to the United States Department of State dismissed the significance of the recommendations made by the Human Rights Council Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review in generally and, specifically, the call for the release of long imprisoned political activists. Harold Koh, put the more than 230 recommendations into "3 categories:

1) Some in line with US policies

2) Some political provocation not to be taken seriously

3) Some to be considered.

Koh promised "all recommendations will be considered and taken back to branches for consideration before March, 2011. Further Koh remarked, “A small set of comments do not make bona fide recommendations for the UPR. These statements, those styled as “recommendations,” are actually political criticisms of U.S. policies or polemical comments about judicial cases, based on unsubstantiated or false allegations, which refer to individual matters that are either ongoing or already completed under court proceedings conducted under due process of law."

1. We call on President Obama to use his presidential powers to grant clemency and commute the sentences to time served and release all COINTELPRO/Civil Rights Era political activists criminalized and held in federal custody.

2. We call on President Obama to direct U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and the U.S. Department of Justice to review the convictions of all COINTELPRO/Civil Rights Era activists in federal or state custody to identify and address civil and human rights violations perpetrated.

3. We call on the Obama Administration to create a national Truth and Reconciliation Commission for the release and compensation of all COINTELPRO/Civil Rights Era activists in federal or state custody.

Demand the Obama Administration Respect the UPR Process and Adopt UN UPR Recommendation to Release U.S. Political Prisoners (Recommendations Numbers 92.153 and 92.154). Please call, fax, write, e-mail, the U.S. UPR Delegation and the Obama Administration to Invite family, friends, neighbors, faith communities, social and professional organizations and elected and appointed officials to join this emergency campaign.

Contact information:
Michael H. Posner, Asst. Secretary of State (Democracy, Human Rights and Labor) T: 202-647-2126/F:202-647-5283/E:PosnerMH@state.gov

Esther Brimmer, Asst. Secretary of State (T:202-647-4000/F: /E: )

Harold Koh, Legal Adviser to State Department (T:202-647-4000 /F:/E:)

Samuel Bagenstos, Principal Deputy Asst. Attorney General (Civil Rights Division) T:202-353-9065/F:202-3072572/E:samuel.bagenstos@usdoj.gov

Eric Holder, U.S. Attorney General (T: 202-514-2001/F:E:AskDOJ@usdoj.gov)

President Barack Obama (T:202-456-1414/ 202-456-1111 /F: 202-456-2461/E: )

The US Human Rights Network formed to promote US accountability to universal human rights standards by building linkages between organizations and individuals. We strive to build a human rights culture in the United States that puts those directly affected by such violations, with a special emphasis on grassroots organizations and social movements, in central leadership roles. The Network is further committed to uniting the US human rights movement with the broader social justice movements both in the U.S. and globally. See U.S. Human Rights Network Reports to the UPR Working Group of the UN Human Rights Council: http://www.ushrnetwork.org/upr_reports.

Contact ushrnpp@gmail.com and ppfirestorm@gmail.com to report the number of e-mails and letters mailed/faxed. Many thanks. FREE ALL U.S. POLITICAL PRISONERS, NOW!
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http://ppfirestorm.blogspot.com
Facebook Group: USHRN PP/State Repression Working Group
Subscribe e-mail listserve: Send blank e-mail to ppfirestorm-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
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Thursday, February 3, 2011

ACTION: Demand Obama Admin Respect UPR, Adopt Political Prisoner Recommendation

IMMEDIATE RELEASE - PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY
February 3, 2011


CALL TO ACTION:
Demand Obama Administration Respect UPR Process,
Adopt UN UPR Recommendation to Release U.S. Political Prisoners

Atlanta, GA, - The U.S. Human Rights Network Political Prisoner/State Repression Working Group (USHRN PP/SR Wkg Grp) today demands the Obama Administration adopt the UN Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) recommendations to release COINTELPRO/Civil Rights Era political activists held in U.S. prisons, some more than 40 years.

"The UPR shed global light on the United States' dirty little open secret and propelled to the forefront the unfinished business of the modern U.S. Civil/Human Rights movement. “We are working with activists across the country to put America’s political prisoners on the global human rights priority list alongside other atrocities like the death penalty, racial discrimination, the absence of treaty ratification and the lack of a national institution monitoring domestic human rights practices” Efia Nwangaza said.

Harold Hongju Koh, Legal Adviser to the United States Department of State dismissed the significance of the recommendations made by the Human Rights Council Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review in generally and, specifically, the call for the release of long imprisoned political activists. Harold Koh, put the more than 230 recommendations into "3 categories:

1) Some in line with US policies

2) Some political provocation not to be taken seriously

3) Some to be considered.

Koh promised "all recommendations will be considered and taken back to branches for consideration before March, 2011. Further Koh remarked, “A small set of comments do not make bona fide recommendations for the UPR. These statements, those styled as “recommendations,” are actually political criticisms of U.S. policies or polemical comments about judicial cases, based on unsubstantiated or false allegations, which refer to individual matters that are either ongoing or already completed under court proceedings conducted under due process of law."

1. We call on President Obama to use his presidential powers to grant clemency and commute the sentences to time served and release all COINTELPRO/Civil Rights Era political activists criminalized and held in federal custody.

2. We call on President Obama to direct U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and the U.S. Department of Justice to review the convictions of all COINTELPRO/Civil Rights Era activists in federal or state custody to identify and address civil and human rights violations perpetrated.

3. We call on the Obama Administration to create a national Truth and Reconciliation Commission for the release and compensation of all COINTELPRO/Civil Rights Era activists in federal or state custody.

Demand the Obama Administration Respect the UPR Process and Adopt UN UPR Recommendation to Release U.S. Political Prisoners (Recommendations Numbers 92.153 and 92.154). Please call, fax, write, e-mail, the U.S. UPR Delegation and the Obama Administration. Invite family, friends, neighbors, faith communities, social and professional organizations and elected and appointed officials to join this emergency campaign.

Contact information:

Michael H. Posner, Asst. Secretary of State (Democracy, Human Rights and Labor) T: 202-647-2126/F:202-647-5283/E:PosnerMH@state.gov

Esther Brimmer, Asst. Secretary of State (T:202-647-4000/F: /E: )

Harold Koh, Legal Adviser to State Department (T:202-647-4000 /F:/E:)

Samuel Bagenstos, Principal Deputy Asst. Attorney General (Civil Rights Division) T:202-353-9065/F:202-3072572/E:samuel.bagenstos@usdoj.gov

Eric Holder, U.S. Attorney General (T: 202-514-2001/F:E:AskDOJ@usdoj.gov)

President Barack Obama (T:202-456-1414/ 202-456-1111 /F: 202-456-2461/E: )

The US Human Rights Network formed to promote US accountability to universal human rights standards by building linkages between organizations and individuals. We strive to build a human rights culture in the United States that puts those directly affected by such violations, with a special emphasis on grassroots organizations and social movements, in central leadership roles. The Network is further committed to uniting the US human rights movement with the broader social justice movements both in the U.S. and globally. See U.S. Human Rights Network Reports to the UPR Working Group of the UN Human Rights Council: http://www.ushrnetwork.org/upr_reports.

Contact ushrnpp@gmail.com and ppfirestorm@gmail.com to report the number of e-mails and letters mailed/faxed. Many thanks. FREE ALL U.S. POLITICAL PRISONERS, NOW!

Demand Obama Admin Respect UPR, Adopt Political Prisoner Recommendation




IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 3, 2011

Contact: Efia Nwangaza (864) 901-8627 / ushrnpp@gmail.com
Stan Willis (312) 750-1950 / swillis818@aol.com
Ajamu Baraka (404) 695-0475 / abaraka@ushrnetwork.org

Obama Administration Challenged to Respect UPR Process

Atlanta, GA, - The U.S. Human Rights Network Political Prisoner/State Repression Working Group (USHRN PP/SR Wkg Grp) today demands the Obama Administration adopt the UN Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) recommendations to release COINTELPRO/Civil Rights Era political activists held in U.S. prisons, some more than 40 years.

"The UPR shed global light on the United States' dirty little open secret and propelled to the forefront the unfinished business of the modern U.S. Civil/Human Rights movement. “We are working with activists across the country to put America’s political prisoners on the global human rights priority list alongside other atrocities like the death penalty, racial discrimination, the absence of treaty ratification and the lack of a national institution monitoring domestic human rights practices” Efia Nwangaza said.

1. We call on President Obama to use his presidential powers to grant clemency and commute the sentences to time served and release all COINTELPRO/Civil Rights Era political activists criminalized and held in federal custody.

2. We call on President Obama to direct U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and the U.S. Department of Justice to review the convictions of all COINTELPRO/Civil Rights Era activists in federal or state custody to identify and address civil and human rights violations perpetrated.

3. We call on the Obama Administration to create a national Truth and Reconciliation Commission for the release and compensation of all COINTELPRO/Civil Rights Era activists in federal or state custody.

The US Human Rights Network formed to promote US accountability to universal human rights standards by building linkages between organizations and individuals. We strive to build a human rights culture in the United States that puts those directly affected by such violations, with a special emphasis on grassroots organizations and social movements, in central leadership roles. The Network is further committed to uniting the US human rights movement with the broader social justice movements both in the U.S. and globally. See U.S. Human Rights Network Reports to the UPR Working Group of the UN Human Rights Council: http://www.ushrnetwork.org/upr_reports.

-30-

Monday, January 31, 2011

USHRN Work Group Demands Release of PP Oscar Lopez Rivera

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February, 2011

U.S. Human Rights Network Working Group Demands the Release of Oscar Lopez Rivera, U.S. Political Activist Imprisoned Close to 30 years

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 28,2011

Contact: Efia Nwangaza (864) 901-8627 or Enjericho@aol.com
Stan Willis (312) 750-1950 or swillis818@aol.com
Ajamu Baraka

Atlanta, GA- The Political Prisoner/State Repression Working Group of the U.S. Human Rights Network calls for the immediate parole of Oscar López Rivera, a Puerto Rican political activist who has served close to 30 years of a 70 year sentence on a COINTELPRO Era seditious conspiracy conviction. He was not accused nor convicted of causing harm or taking a life

Oscar Rivera Lopez, 68 years old and a model prisoner, is a decorated Vietnam veteran, who worked in Chicago as a community organizer for better housing, education, employment, and living conditions for Puerto Ricans and Latinos. He helped to found institutions which still thrive today. He is a father and grandfather, encouraging his daughter and granddaughter as they pursue higher education degrees.

In 1999, former President Bill Clinton commuted the sentences of Mr. Lopez Rivera's co-defendants. They, convicted of the same offense, had served between 16 and 20 years in prison, President Clinton determined that their sentences were disproportionately long and that they posed no threat to society. Applying the same standard, he said that Oscar López Rivera should be released by September of 2009.

Since the release of Mr. Lopez Rivera's co-defendants, including Carlos Alberto Torres who served 30 years and paroled in July of 2010, each person has established him/herself as a productive, law-abiding people contributing to the betterment of society. We believe this is and will be true of Oscar Lopez Rivera also.

We, the U.S. Human Rights Network Political Prisoner/State Repression Working Group, join the United Nations Decolonization Committee, the Ecumenical and Interreligious Coalition of Puerto Rico, members of the U.S. House of Representatives and other U.S. elected officials, civil society of Puerto Rico, and many other human rights, civic, religious, political and community leaders in the U.S. and Puerto Rico in the call for theU. S. government's immediate release of Oscar Lopez Rivera.

We urge all people of conscience to encourage the U.S. Parole Commission to grant Mr. Lopez Rivera immediate parole. We encourage participation in the continuing solidarity actions to call the Parole Board (301.492.5990), fax (301/492-5543) and mail support letters to the Parole Board UNTIL NOTIFICATION THAT THE PAROLE BOARD HAS REJECTED OR CONFIRMED THE EXAMINER’S DECISION. Contact alejandrom@boricuahumanrights.org to report the number of letters mailed/faxed.

See U.S. Human Rights Network Reports to the UPR Working Group of the UN Human Rights Council: http://www.ushrnetwork.org/upr_reports.
-30-

AFRICAN AMERICAN INSTITUTE FOR POLICY STUDIES & PLANNING
321 W. Antrim Drive P.O.Box 16102 Greenville, SC 29607
Thursday, September 14, 2010
Contact: Efia Nwangaza
Email: enjericho@aol.com
Tel: 1-864-901-8627


US Human Rights Report Touts African-American President, Attorney General, Secretaries of State, But Silent on Still Imprisoned Black COINTELPRO/Civil Rights Era Political Prisoners and Ongoing political repression in the U.S.

The personal achievements of the current U.S. President, Attorney General, and past Secretaries of State of African descent, noted in the United States’ first Universal Periodic Review Report (US UPR, The Report) to the UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, are unique to them. Many continue to hope that their success will become more than symbolic and that U.S. participation in the UPR process will have a transformative effect, resulting in actual and broader opportunities for all African Americans and other disenfranchised peoples of the United States and the world; despite its deeply flawed, self-serving submission.

The U.S. Report highlights the United States’ founding mythology and references the joint petition, “An Appeal to the World!,” presented, after great difficulty, by Dr. W.E. B. Du Bois (and Walter White, NAACP National Secretary), to an assistant of the first UN General Secretary, Norwegian politician, Trygve Lie, on October 23, 1947. It was at the height of the Palestine Partition debate. The petition was not presented to the General Assembly, but received worldwide recognition and support of UN nations. Among other things, it appealed to the UN, as a last resort, to call for an end to U.S. apartheid, Jim Crow segregation, and structural barriers, policies and practices preventing African Americans from full social, economic, cultural, and political rights as provided by the U.S. Constitution, statutes, and UN obligations; especially, the still prevailing violative electoral system based on African American, particularly male, criminalization and voter disenfranchisement.

Structural disenfranchisement operates today, despite the successful 1960’s U.S. Civil/Human Rights Movement referenced as “a model of civic engagement and political participation.” Sadly, like the U.S. Constitution, the 1965 Voting Rights Act still allows disenfranchisement and forced labor due to “criminal conviction,” an enforcement avoidance loop hole. The United States has a long history of racialized criminal laws designed to impose servitude and prevent political participation. They continue to evolve from the 1600’s Slave Codes, 1860’s Post-Civil War Black Codes, Jim Crow, and the 1960’s Modern Civil Rights Acts neutralized by “Law and Order” politics and hyper-criminal codes with draconian sentences and civic and social death of every form. Today’s hooks are the “War on Terror” and the “War on Drugs.”

Currently, African American males account for 35 percent of all Americans now barred from voting because of felony convictions. Two percent of all Americans, or 3.9 million, have lost the right to vote, compared with 13 percent of adult Black men. Note, while the incarcerated cannot vote, they are warehoused in prisons located in rural, predominately white localities and counted as residents, reminiscent of slavery when African Americans were counted as 3/5th human, for purposes of political representation and public funding.

As a result of this practice, of which Dr. Du Bois complained, the incarcerating locality is credited with increased representation and funding and the inmate’s community, to which he will return, remains under represented and underfunded. An opportunity for the Obama Administration to address the disproportionate levels of unemployment, inadequate housing, educational equity, and healthcare (not insurance) about which The Report claims dissatisfaction.

It is in this repressive environment, a longstanding tradition of resistance by African Americans, and the optimism born of successful global independence struggles that, like its contemporaries in India, Ghana, Kenya, Southern Africa, Cuba and elsewhere, internal resistance to U.S. apartheid escalated. It came from nearly all sectors of society. As a result, organizations dedicated variously to peaceful protests, passive resistance, direct action, insurrection and armed resistance emerged.

The Obama Administration referred to only one sector of the modern Civil/Human Rights campaign; the sector with which the government chose to negotiate when forced to negotiate. However, together, like the wings of a bird, all sectors combined to apply the varying degrees of pressure that precipitated the negotiations, the resulting laws The Report applauds, and the positions U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, former Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condaleeza Rice, and other elected and appointed African American office holders, as well as Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton and traditionally marginalized members of U.S. society currently enjoy.

U.S. apartheid, in its various forms and degrees of repression, sparked robust internal resistance which was met with virulent official and quasi-official violence. The corresponding political aims of the militant members of the modern U.S. Civil/Human Rights campaign have been discounted, criminalized, and they still languish in U.S. prisons. They are survivors of the dually celebrated modern U. S. Civil Rights Movement and the Congressionally determined illegal COINTELPRO/Civil Rights Era law enforcement vigilantism which included murder, mayhem, false charges and convictions, medical neglect, and continuing, interminable, retaliatory denial of parole and incarceration of 40 years and counting. They are as former UN Ambassador Andrew Young once noted, political prisoners in U.S. prisons.

Unlike the newly formed government of South Africa and states resolving major internal upheaval, no Truth and Reconciliation Commission nor the well deserved clemency awarded others has been offered to these stalwart human rights champions, political prisoners, prisoners of war, and exiles, in and for the more than 40 years of progress the U.S. report celebrates. This is a violation of their and their communities’ human rights and the United States’ obligations under the UN Charter, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as the U.S. Constitution.

Along this same line, The Report fails to address the growing number of broadly defined laws, policies, and practices which suppress dissent and charitable contributions, require government reports and affirmations for bank accounts or property rentals. It is silent as to the increased number of persons incarcerated, isolated in custody, under surveillance, and organizations infiltrated, criminalized, and labeled “Terrorist,” under the guise of national security and “The War on Terror.”

Police still routinely make unfounded mass arrests and detentions to keep people off the streets and out of the eye of the media. There is the return of harassment and arrest of unembedded media, monitoring of social networks, and police-initiated violence at demonstrations, and use of so-called less-lethal weapons against peaceful protesters. These weapons—including chemical sprays, impact projectiles, and electroshock weapons, cattle-prods of the 1960s—are often associated with fatalities. This practice persists though condemned by several independent panels and the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

Ongoing and pervasive profiling throughout the United States on the basis of race, immigration status, national origin, religion or ethnicity, under the guise of fighting illegal immigration, drugs, and terrorism, have resulted in increased migrant deaths, mass incarceration, and use of torture against African Americans and other persons of color. Arizona’s SB 1070 has been instituted in several states, with modifications from recent court orders and in anticipation of Justice Department litigation. Law enforcement officers, throughout the country, who have engaged in torture and extracted confessions continue to escape prosecution while individuals who were tortured continue to be prosecuted or languish in prison based on the use of coerced confessions in their criminal cases.

The Government’s increasing disregard for the U.S. Constitution and its human rights obligations is further displayed in its treatment of Muslim, Arab and South Asian inmates. In 2006 and 2007, the Federal Bureau of Prisons secretly created the Communications Management Unit (CMU), a prison unit designed to hold “dangerous terrorists and other high-risk inmates, requiring heightened monitoring of external and internal communications.” Many such prisoners are sent to these isolation units for their constitutionally protected religious beliefs, unpopular political views, in retaliation for challenging poor treatment, or other rights violations; over two-thirds are Muslim, even though Muslims represent only 6 percent of the general federal prison population.

In 1996, the U.S. government established Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) to limit the communications of prisoners with an alleged reach and ability to commit violence. Now SAMs can be placed on anyone with a “proclivity for violence.” Without criminal conviction, contact and communication even with family members can be limited. SAMs are imposed disproportionately on Muslims “suspected of connections with terrorism” and is typical of terrorism suspect’s treatment in U.S. prisons and courts.

“All of these issues are of utmost concern to U.S. civil society organizations because the U.S government, State and Justice Departments especially, is liable for enforcement and protection of the rights and person of people in its borders and under its jurisdiction. Further, the U.S. holds itself out as the global leader in human rights and is accepted in many quarters as the operative standard thus influencing the treatment of people around the world. If U.S. civil society’s concerns are to be addressed and the hope placed in the Obama Administration properly laid, the U.S. government must take leadership in public human rights education and official enforcement. Then, U.S. participation in the UPR process will have a transformative effect, resulting in actual and broader opportunities for all African Americans and other disenfranchised peoples of the United States and the world; despite its deeply flawed, self-serving submission,” stated Efia Nwangaza, Director, African American Institute for Policy Studies & Planning.

The African American Institute, under the auspices of the US Human Right Network (http://www.ushrnetwork.org), is involved with the UN’s first Universal Periodic Review of the US, which is scheduled to take place in November 2010. The UPR assesses each country's adherence to its human rights obligations under the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), human rights treaties ratified by the country, its voluntary commitments, and applicable international law. During the review, the “national report” provided by the country under review, the reports of UN bodies, and reports from other “stakeholders” such as civil society and national human rights institutions, are considered by the UPR Working Group. African American Institute, Ida B. Wells Media Institute, and the October 22nd Coalition wrote a cluster report on POLITICAL REPRESSION: Continuum of Domestic Repression. Ms. Nwangaza also co-authored POLITICAL REPRESSION: Political Prisoners (COINTELPRO/Civil Rights Era) stakeholder’s report.

FO: US Human Right Network go to: http://www.ushrnetwork.org/upr_reports .

USA: STATE REPRESSION

9th United Nations Universal Periodic Review
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: State Repression
September 14, 2010


While recent years mark key anniversaries in U.S. political and social history, e.g. public accommodation, voting rights, school desegregation, civil rights and anti-war protest landmarks, the protection and advancement of civil and human rights have declined amidst the celebration of these landmark years. The current environment tends to be little more than a cover for law enforcement which has grown increasingly more repressive and hostile to the U.S. Constitution's 1st, 4th, 13th, 14t,h , and 15th Amendments, in addition to international obligations.

The United States has remained true to its longer history of political repression and use of its criminal justice system to quash dissent. In addition, it falls short of meeting its international human rights obligations as provided in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, U.N. treaties which it has ratified, and other international instruments. More specifically, its violations are of basic human rights protected in the International Covention to Eliminate All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

Police in the United States, along with other arms of law enforcement, continue to be used to suppress efforts demanding recognition, protection and fulfillment of social and economic human rights; namely, the right to education, health, housing, work, and social security. Such efforts, sought individually and collectively, have, and continue to be primary targets and are met with racial profiling, surveillance, infiltration, provocation, immobilization, arrest, detention, police violence, prosecutorial misconduct, excessive sentences, and death --all with impunity. 1960s Civil Rights Movement activists caught in the government drag net known as COINTELPRO are victims of such misconduct and remain in prison to this day.

Police still routinely make unfounded mass arrests and detentions to keep people off the streets and out of the eye of the media which tends to be accommodating. There is the return of police-initiated violence at demonstrations, arrest of unembedded journalist, and the use of so-called less-lethal weapons against peaceful protesters. These weapons—among them chemical sprays, impact projectiles, and electroshock weapons, cattle-prods of the 1960s—are often associated with fatalities. This practice persists though condemned by several independent panels and the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

Ongoing and pervasive profiling throughout the United States on the basis of race, immigration status, national origin, religion or ethnicity, under the guise of fighting illegal immigration, drugs, and terrorism, have resulted in increased migrant deaths, mass incarceration and use of torture against African Americans and other persons of color. Law enforcement officers, throughout the country, who have engaged in torture for the purpose of extracting confessions continue to escape prosecution while individuals who were tortured are prosecuted or languish in prison based on the use of coerced confessions in their criminal cases.

In addition to the Abu Ghraib style Chicago Police Torture Cases (Burge Cases) of 1973, is the current case of the San Francisco 8 (SF8). Both are examples of the longstanding domestic use of torture against African Americans by law enforcement officers. The Burge Cases were based on race. The SF8 case is based on race and political beliefs and activities. 30 years ago, Black Panther Party for Self Defense members ( a social justice organization) were tortured over several days, in various ways including electric cattle prods to their genitals, confessed and signed pre-written statements regarding various crimes and the 1971 death of a San Francisco Police officer. In 1974, a federal court ruled that the tainted statements were inadmissible and the charges dismissed. Not only have the perpetrators never been brought to justice, but two of them now serve as agents with the Anti-Terrorist Task Force of the Federal Prosecutor’s Office under the auspices of U.S. Department of Homeland Security and have resurrected the dismissed charges based on the tainted confessions. A violation of article 5(b) and (d) of the Convention guaranteeing the right to be free of excessive force and the rights to freedom of speech, expression, assembly and association.

The Government’s increasing disregard for the U.S. Constitution and its human rights obligations is further displayed in its treatment of Muslim, Arab and South Asian inmates. In 2006 and 2007, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP or “Bureau”) secretly created the Communications Management Unit (CMU), a prison unit designed to hold dangerous terrorists and other high-risk inmates, requiring heightened monitoring of their external and internal communications. Many prisoners, however, are sent to these isolation units for their constitutionally protected religious beliefs, unpopular political views, or in retaliation for challenging poor treatment or other rights violations in the federal prison system. Over two-thirds of the CMU population is Muslim, even though Muslims represent only 6 percent of the general federal prison population.

In 1996, the U.S. government established Special Administrative Measures, or SAMs, to limit the communications of prisoners with an alleged reach and ability to commit violence, now SAMs can be placed on anyone with a “proclivity for violence.” Without criminal conviction, it limits contact and ability to communicate with the outside world – including members of the family. SAMs are being imposed disproportionately on Muslims suspected of connections with terrorism and is typical of how terrorism suspects are being treated in U.S. prisons and courts.

RECOMMENDATION FOR ACTION BY THE U.S. GOVERNMENT

1. Take leadership role to insure creation of public education and protections afforded underU.S. Constitution and international treaties and conventions are applied vigorously.
2. Adopt and ratify all major treaties and conventions, without RUDs.
3. Commute the sentences and release all U.S. Political Prisoners/Prisoners of War (PP/POWs) and exiles from the COINTELPRO/Civil Rights Era immediately and unconditionally.
4. The United States must institute an Executive Review of all cases involving those imprisoned as a result of COINTELPRO and adopt the necessary measures to ensure the right of COINTELPRO PP/POWs/Exiles to seek just and adequate reparation and satisfaction to redress acts of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, and to design effective measures to prevent the repetition of such acts.
5. That Mumia Abu Jamal and Leonard Peltier, at a minimum, be afforded a new trial.

INFO: US Human Rights Network go to: http://www.ushrnetwork.org/upr_reports .

POLITICAL PRISONERS IN THE USA

9th United Nations Universal Periodic Review
Political Prisoners
In the
United States of America
September 14, 2010


In 1976, a Congressional sub-committee popularly known as the “Church Committee” was formed to investigate and study the FBI’s covert action programs. The Church Committee concluded that the FBI “conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association, on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter violence.” The Committee’s factual findings revealed massive human rights violations against U.S. citizens based on race, political ideas, and political affiliations.

In the final reports of the Committee, permanent means of congressional review were recommended. Shockingly, none of the recommendations made by this Congressional committee addressed the human rights violations suffered by dozens of Civil/Human Rights activists who were victimized by the U.S. government’s political repression against African-Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Native American communities. Such repression resulted in murders, injuries, false arrests, malicious prosecutions and lengthy imprisonments of scores of political activists. Many of these persons languish in prisons throughout the United States, political prisoners and prisoners of war, subjected to cruel and inhumane conditions. Several have died in prison; others have endured years of solitary confinement, poor medical care, and various other forms of abuse, including periodic,perfunctory parole hearings resulting in routine denial of release. Others are exiled abroad with bounties on their heads and in fear of U.S. rendition.

Today's political prisoners, prisoners of war, and exiles were Civil/Human Rights activists who became victims of the FBI counterintelligence program called COINTELPRO. COINTELPRO consisted of a series of covert actions directed against domestic dissident groups. In these programs, the Bureau went beyond the collection of intelligence to secret actions designed to "disrupt" and "neutralize" target groups and individuals. These techniques were adopted wholesale from wartime counterintelligence techniques. It is indisputable that COINTELPRO was responsible for maiming, murders, false prosecutions and frame-ups, destruction, and mayhem throughout the country. It had infiltrated every organization and association that aspired to bring about social change in the United States, whether with or without the use of arms. Hundreds of members of the Puerto Rican Independence movement, the Black Panther Party (BPP), the Young Lords, the Weather Underground, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Republic of New Africa (RNA), the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), members of the American Indian Movement (AIM),

______________________
1 This Report was submitted by The National Conference of Black Lawyers and The Malcolm X Center for Self Determination. The cluster group is comprised of NGOs, grassroots organizations, church groups, attorney organizations, elected officials, college professors, law professionals, students, concerned citizens, and others. Read the UPR Political Prisoner Report:
http://www.ushumanrightsnetwork.org/sites.default.files.PoliticalPrisonersReport.pdf

the Chicano Movement, the Black Liberation Army (BLA), Environmentalists, the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), Peace activists, and everyone in between were targeted by COINTELPRO for "neutralization."

Government Repression Included Murder
In 1969, the FBI and local Chicago police agents were responsible for the predawn assassination of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark as they lay asleep in their beds. Hampton and Clark were the leaders of the Chicago office of the Black Panther Party.

Harsher Sentences and Repeated Denial of Parole
Many of today's political prisoners were incarcerated as a direct result of COINTELPRO's activities, namely, they were targeted because of their political beliefs and/or actions. Unlike those convicted and sentenced for similar crimes, political prisoners were given much harsher sentences and subsequently routinely denied parole. Former BLA member, Sundiata Acoli (a.k.a. Clark Squire), the codefendant of exiled Assata Shakur, was sentenced to life plus thirty years for the death of a New Jersey State trooper. He was eligible for parole after twenty years. After serving twenty-two years, however, the New Jersey parole board denied him parole and gave him an unprecedented twenty-year set off. Susan Rosenberg was sentenced to fifty-eight years for possession of explosives and denied parole despite her exemplary prison record. Mumia Abu Jamal, a former Black Panther Party member, was sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit. Leonard Peltier was sentenced to life in 1975; another model prisoner, he was denied parole again in 2009. Acoli and Peltier are but recent examples of the use of the parole process to exact political punishment. Parole officials often acknowledge the advancing age, deteriorating health, significant release plans and good prison records of these aging PP/POWs.


Recommendations
1. All U.S. Political Prisoners/Prisoners of War (PP/POWs) imprisoned as a result of COINTELPRO must be immediately and unconditionally released from U.S. prisons.

2. The United States must institute an Executive review of all cases involving those imprisoned as a result of COINTELPRO.

3. The United States must initiate a criminal investigation into the conspiracy to commit the murder of Fred Hampton, Mark Clark and other political activists targeted by COINTELPRO.

4. The United States must adopt the necessary measures to ensure the right of PP/POWs to seek just and adequate reparation and satisfaction to redress acts of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, and to design effective measures to prevent the repetition of such acts.

5. The United States must, at a minimum, afford death row inmate Mumia Abu Jamal, and, Native American Leonard Peltier, new trials.

INFO: US Human Rights Network go to: http://www.ushrnetwork.org/upr_reports .